Any time I remembered I'd record a whole John Peel evening show - this was when he had a 2 hour slot, I think from 10-12 weekdays. Actually that seems insane now, that something as MOR as Radio 1 seems now would allow Peel to play such a range of music during weekdays like that. I guess the closest we have to that now is Radio 3's Late Junction, although it's a bit more 'world-y' than Peel. 

So I'd record a whole show, leaving my tape deck to record onto one side then auto flip pover and record onto the other side. If there was a particular session on that show and I needed to be up to change tapes, I'd stay awake, otherwise I could sleep through my radio recording that. Then over the next few days I'd go through the tapes and tape-to-tape put it into a mixtape - although I never really thought of them as mixtapes. 

The general idea was to keep the songs in order, and try not to feel the urge to edit too many of the songs out. If it was something I knew I wouldn't like, it didn't go in, but I'd like to think i was pretty open-minded and would allow things to 'grow on me'. I remember fast-forwarding  through what I always thought of as 'widdly', instrumental African guitar music but would probably now be more open to listen to. I usually edited out Peel's banter, which kind of feels like a bad idea now, but would often leave in Peel's intro our outro dialogue, often as it would run over the records anyway - giving rise to the catchphrase I still have with one of my friends, always delivered in a Peel accent : 'This is Polvo.' The nature of listening to Peel's intros to get the band names and titles also led to a few amusing notations on my 'inlay cards' e.g. the band Pet Lamb misheard as Pettle Am. 

Over a few years I recorded around 22 tapes, and I'm pretty sure still have them all, dotted around. I'd give each one a title including the words John Peel, hence 'John Peel is my co-pilot' (named after a band he often played, 'God is my co-pilot')and another I remember, 'John Peel announces the death of a god' (a semi ironic name for the tape including Peel's delivery to me of news that Kurt Cobain had killed himself). The nature of it led to some interesting discoveries. Through Jon Peel's show I first heard / heard of Pavement, Jacob's Mouse, The Fall, Fly Ashtray, Tsunami and many others. Most of those I still listen to to this day - in fact there's a Tsunami CD in my Mac as we speak. 

I've still got tapes of the top 40 I recorded *cough* years ago. The days before children had disposable incomes.